


with one glimpse

by svnflowerz



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, First Dates, blind dates, ms structural reform reyna avila ramirez arellano, ugly roman statues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svnflowerz/pseuds/svnflowerz
Summary: reyna meets rachel at the worst possible time..or, seven months after the end of the giant war nico visits camp jupiter with the promise of setting reyna up on a blind date.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo & Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	with one glimpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silima/gifts).



> this was inspired by @silima on tumblr's reychel art ! i don't know how to add links to ao3 but it's so so good!!

reyna meets rachel at the worst possible time.  
  
she’s losing her influence over the people that she’s done her best to hold onto at the seams for years. her sister has dealt with coups before, but there is something to be said about being a twenty two year old queen who has never had her authority truly questioned before versus a sixteen year old praetor on her second year of her term that has constantly been filled with thinly veiled insults and redirections to the opinions of her male counterparts. 

she is the only one willing to see rachel elizabeth dare, oracle of camp halfblood and her companion grover underwood, the apparent new lord of the wild. she does it because she knows that something is wrong. the greeks may have attacked camp jupiter, but it never felt right. 

reyna meets rachel at the worst possible time. rachel leaves an impression, of course, she is a legitimate oracle and all reyna has known when it comes to fate and prophecy is whatever octavian does with the teddy bears he cuts up. and, well. rachel is also someone that likely leaves an impression everywhere she goes. her bright red hair and paint stained jeans and nails with chipped, multicoloured polish make a clear picture in reyna’s head. if things had been different rachel wouldn’t have been able to leave reyna’s thoughts. 

but, it is a war and reyna is trying desperately to hold everything together when all the legion seems to want to do is follow the words of a power hungry augur who has never won a sparring match. and then the message rachel dare and grover underwood came to deliver sends reyna all the way to greece.

after everything, reyna knows no lost love for eros or venus, both deities having wreaked pain for her and nico. nico, however, reyna thinks might be better than a godsend. 

seven months after the end of the giant war nico visits camp jupiter with the promise of setting her up on a blind date. 

at first reyna is skeptical. nico is a fourteen year old boy who spends every other weekend in the underworld and the rest of the time avoiding reyna’s questions about whether or not he’s going to high school. but, nico does have a very nice boyfriend and he claims that will has “an infinite supply” of lesbian friends her age. so reyna agrees to one blind date, on the condition that nico tours the campus of the high schools in new rome with her. percy likes to cut it on their iris messages to say things about how annabeth is going to have a high school set up in no time, but reyna always reminds him that not even new rome was built in a day.

the two of them are getting hot chocolate in reyna’s favourite cafe by the park with cherry trees that reyna likes to watch and keep track of the blooming patterns. nico is texting will under the table while reyna pretends to be interested in people watching the passerby on the other side of the window they’re seated by. a little girl spies reyna’s purple shirt and the golden laurel in her hair and waves, reyna winks at her. 

“ha, you spying new recruits?” nico asks, evidently finished making fun of whatever will sent him. 

reyna raises an eyebrow at him, “you were at the senate meeting where frank and i raised the age of voluntary service to sixteen. if she is interested in the legion, i will likely be long retired by the time she’s old enough to join.”

nico makes a face at her. reyna sticks her tongue out in return. most of the time she behaves better, but nico’s company makes her act like a child. could be the shared trauma, or the fact that they were both gay. nico’s phone buzzes again and saves reyna from embarrassing herself further in public. she looks over at the display of pastries at the front of the cafe and considers them carefully. hm. she walks over and orders a chocolate croissant for herself and an oatmeal raisin cookie for nico. his tastebuds are strange, but reyna’s learned better than to try and help him in months of their friendship. 

when she returns to their table she plucks his phone out of his hands and pockets it. she ignores his protests and grabby hands, “so. this blind date.”

nico retracts his hands and grins, she doesn’t trust it at all. “she’s going to be holding a blue hairbrush,” he pauses to snicker for no apparent reason. “and she’ll meet you at the library. she told me she’s going to pick a really weird statue to stand next to so you’ll have to make conversation while it’s staring down at you.”

reyna blinks at that. all the statues near the library are odd, so that won’t help very much. but the blue hairbrush should be enough to identify her. 

“what’s she like?” reyna asks. nico shrugs at her, so she pulls out the cookie she hid under a napkin and waves it at him. 

“she likes art and loud noise,” nico tells her as he reaches over the table and grabs the cookie from her hand. reyna lets him because she doesn’t feel like fighting him in the cafe for it. besides, by nico’s cagey standards that’s a decent amount of information.

she asks him if any of the friends he’s made at camp half blood would be interested in joining them on the tour they’re taking of high schools in new rome in a few weeks and he shoves his cookie into his mouth to avoid answering her. reyna lets him avoid her questions as she tries her croissant.

weeks later after a successful tour of colosseum high school with ten of camp half bloods young and at risk to monster attack teenagers, nico hands her a library book he forgot to return that she’s supposed to use for the girl he’s setting her up with to recognize her with.

“you’re going to get your library card revoked,” she tells him. “do you know how long it took me to get you one? you don’t even live in new rome yet.”

“i don’t like the sound of ‘yet’,” nico says. reyna bares her teeth as she smiles at him, but then she leaves him with his friends and a map to wander new rome for the rest of the day and makes her way over to the library. 

reyna has only been on a date that mattered once before. before the unsettling conversation she had with venus, she had tried to feel things for the boys who she knew she should like. _no demigod will heal your heart_. she is not thankful for venus, the goddess had been cruel and cruelty is not what reyna had needed when the goddess of love had pulled her away after reyna had risked everything on hope and her faith in her ability to survive. 

after the war, though, venus’s words had haunted her. reyna has never had time to think about attraction in depth, but piper’s reassurances that she might love a mortal or a god did not seem to be what venus had been alluding to. reyna has no interest in letting someone else heal her heart, and even less interest in any immortal figure. and. reyna had pieced it together with the help of her inability to tear her gaze away from piper’s beautiful brown eyes that fundamentally she couldn’t love a boy. 

she’d gone to lunch with a centurion who had a pretty singing voice and liked card games. it had been fun, but the other girl hadn’t really been able to separate reyna as herself and reyna as praetor. 

nico’s friend is from camp half blood and reyna has found since the giant war that she is very fond of the looseness of the greeks. she doesn’t like to jinx things, but reyna thinks today will be at least a day of fun. 

rachel elizabeth dare, oracle of camp half blood, is sitting at the feet of a particularly ugly statue of emperor constantine holding a blue hairbrush. reyna pauses in her tracks. a memory of the shape of rachel’s mouth as she said reyna’s full name the first time they met, months ago, plays in the back of reyna’s head. 

reyna met rachel at the worst possible time. nico’s given her a second chance. 

rachel is tormenting the pigeons near her when reyna walks up to her. rachel’s hair is cropped shorter than it was the last time reyna saw her. her nails are less chipped, and it looks like they’re painted in a rainbow pattern. 

“hello,” reyna says. she feels awkward, but she wants to try her best to be charming. everything about rachel is breathtaking. 

rachel looks up from the pigeons she was making faces at and sways. reyna reaches out to steady her. “are you okay?” reyna asks, concerned. 

“uh,” rachel laughs lightly and reyna wants to hear that sound many, many more times. “yeah! i’m find. nico didn’t seem to think to tell me it was you.”

reyna doesn’t quite understand why that made rachel swoon but she smiles at her, because she really wants to smile at rachel and it seems like it fits. “i tried to get nico to tell me who you were going to be, but he can be a bother when he wants to. i have to return a library book of his, but i’ll be right back.”

rachel grins back at her, “sounds good. hey, do you know who this unfortunate statue if of?” rachel points up at constantine and mimes a sick face. 

reyna can’t help but laugh, “yeah. emperor constantine.”

“wonder what he did to piss off the artist,” rachel muses. reyna laughs again and does her best to rush to return nico’s book without looking like she’s running to get back to rachel. 

when she returns she and rachel decide to walk though the park nearby and then go for something sweet after. rachel tells her she’s vegan and reyna plots a path in her head that will lead them to a gelato place. 

“so,” reyna says. “nico said you like art and loud noise?”

rachel blushes, it’s a little splotchy and it hides some of her freckles. reyna wants a picture of it. “uh yeah, i paint a lot and i think i’m going to apply to scad and some other more realistic schools.” she gestures to her denim shorts and reyna looks closer to see paint stains similar to the ones rachel wore when they first met.

“what do you like to paint?” reyna asks her. she wants to know everything rachel wants to tell her. 

rachel smiles at her and reyna can tell she asked the right question. as they walk rachel tells her about how they realized she was meant to be the oracle of delphi because she started to paint the future. now, rachel paints things to send a message or make people smile. reyna gets rachel to show her an oil painting she did of annabeth and thalia that percy commissioned her for for annabeth’s birthday. “he’s paying me in baked goods,” rachel tells her. “his mom’s blue chocolate chip cookies are better than ambrosia.”

reyna pauses her at that, “can you eat ambrosia?”

rachel winks at her, “no!”

rachel proceeds to ask her about her dogs, and reyna loves to talk about aurum and argentum. she’s telling rachel about how they like to steal her food even though they’re made of metal when rachel plucks a blue flower and tucks it into her braid. reyna trails off as she watches reyna, and her breath catches when rachel’s hand brushes against her jaw. 

rachel’s hand drops to her side and she meets reyna’s eyes. “reyna,” rachel asks, her eyes sparkling and her mouth quirking at the side. “this is a first date and all, but can i kiss you?”

reyna remembers how to breathe, somehow and nods. “yes,” reyna says, smiling. “i’d like that. i like you.”

rachel blushes again, and she places one hand gently on reyna’s cheek, and the other on reyna’s shoulder. reyna puts her hands on rachel’s waist and hooks a finger into one of rachel’s belt loops, she pulls rachel closer and she thinks rachel must be able to hear her heartbeat. 

gently, rachel presses her lips against hers and reyna sinks into the touch. reyna can’t think of anything else other than rachel. 

they break apart and reyna can feel a giant grin fill her face, it grows even more when she realizes rachel’s smile is just as big. rachel’s hands drop down and reyna lets go of rachel’s waist so she can hold rachel’s hand. 

“what’s your favourite flavour sorbet?” reyna asks her. 

rachel blinks, “hm?”

“we’re headed to a gelato place,” reyna says. she pulls rachel along the path. rachel laughs as they go and they talk about rachel’s strange taste in music and reyna’s guilty pleasure of badly made action movies. rachel’s hand is soft and reyna thinks the feeling of it against her skin is maybe the best thing ever.

**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading! you can find me on tumblr at my main zoenightshadez or my writblr alienwritings. also! pls join my pjo girls discord, the link is pinned to my main :)


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